THE HAYS HUMM

Award Winning Online Magazine - June 2021

Tom Jones - Betsy Cross - Constance Quigley - Mimi Cavender - Steve Wilder

A Hike in Coleman's Canyon Preserve by Constance Quigley

I recently had the opportunity to join the Restoration Rangers and Botanist Bill Carr on a nature walk/botanical expedition at Coleman’s Canyon Preserve. Our troop consisted of Art Crowe, Richard Lindley, Bill Carr, Jim Miller, Beverly Gordon, Lin Weber, Melinda Seib, Chris Middleton, Doray Lendacky, Tina Adkins, and myself.

Purchased by the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association in 2019, Coleman’s Canyon Preserve is “a land conservation and restoration project contiguous to Jacob’s Well Natural Area and proposed to be transferred to the County through the Parks and Open Spaces initiative.” You can learn more details about the origin and plan for this 100+ acres of golden-cheeked warbler habitat and its significant karst features here.

Our hike began with a quick trip to the Wimberley bat cave, where our intrepid fellow Master Naturalist, Doray Lendacky, descended to have a peek inside. She did not find any bats, but she did note that there were mysterious “breath-like sounds” in the cave. Could it be a mountain lion? Not likely, but the cave is quite deep, so your guess is as good as mine.

Doray the explorer - Photo by Art Crowe

No, Doray did not touch the poison ivy. Photo by Chris Middleton

The bat cave has been explored and mapped by spelunkers.

After our bat cave adventure, we returned to the parking area to meet Bill Carr and begin our adventure into the canyon. Our hike took us past some old structures that are being selectively removed or restored as scenic overlooks. A great deal of work has been done to remove impervious cover and allow the natural vegetation to recover at the top of the canyon.

There's a canyon down there...

Someone had a really nice view from this home.

We followed an old road down to the creek bed of the canyon and followed Bill on his search for uncommon plants and unique vegetation along the canyon walls.

The bottom of the canyon

The canyon walls are covered with fossils

One of our destinations was an area containing some unique plants

Bill pointing out some beauties growing out of the rock walls

The canyon opened up again

The areas surrounding us were filled with a variety wildflowers and native plants

Jim Miller and Beverly Gordon contemplating the climb

When we were finished exploring, Beverly Gordon, our fellow Master Naturalist, demonstrated her goat-like skills by climbing right up this rocky canyon wall and leading us to where we had parked. She claimed that she had no idea where we were going to come out of the canyon, but I attribute her success to goat-like instinct. After we all scrambled up the rocky slope and climbed over an old fence (with the aid of Jim Miller), we made our way back to our vehicles. It was a fabulous canyon hike! See below for a gallery of our findings.

RESURRECTION BIRDS

Betsy Cross

In her new book The Hummingbirds’ Gift, Sy Montgomery starts: “This is the story of a resurrection.” A few pages in, she continues, “The Aztecs believed hummingbirds, who are furious fighters, are reincarnated warriors. They’ve returned to life with swords as beaks, continuing their battles forever in the sky. Early Spanish visitors to the New World, seeing hummingbirds for the first time (they only live in this half of the globe), called them ‘resurrection birds.’ They believed that anything that glittered so brightly had to have been made new each day.”

Just yesterday, I discovered a fourth active hummingbird nest this year—three in my own yard and one at Jacob’s Well. And within my small circle of Master Naturalist friends, Doray Lendacky reports three, and Constance Quigley has been watching one too. Who else?

Nest Cycle of Hummingbird One, Affectionately Known as H1

On April 12 while inspecting one of my distressed live oak trees, I noticed H1’s nest. It was about 7.5 feet up. Not knowing if it was active or an old one from last year, I took a peek inside and saw two tiny eggs, each resembling a Tic Tac. Mother hummers will not return to a nest if they feel the slightest threat or imposition, so photographers must be incredibly respectful. The nest photos below were taken with great care and consideration. I never approached the nest if H1 was on it. My mantra through the whole cycle remained always: first, do no harm. My second rule: once you’ve got a pic, call it an honorable harvest, and don’t linger. I faithfully followed these rules without exception.

It’s critical to remember that baby hummers need to be fed every 20 minutes. Except for these brief in-nest pictures taken with my cell phone, all other photos were obtained at a distance of approximately 40 feet with a tripod and camera—mostly video. I would hit the record button and walk away. During each 25-30 minute video, H1 came in at least one time to feed her babies, confirming this well documented feeding cycle.
It’s also critical not to accidently flush a fledgling from a nest prematurely. So once these babies developed their flight feathers (about a week before fledging), I refrained from approaching the nest at all. The entire cycle, from first egg hatching on April 22 to fledging on May 14, was 22 days. A day after H1 and her family had departed the area, I measured the opening of her nest cup. It was slightly more than 1 inch in diameter.

Besides the actual calendar dates on the photos below, note the labels for Day 1, Day 2/0, Day 7/5, and so forth. These refer to the age of each baby (B1/B2) and provide a timeline to track development. For example on April 29, B1 is 7 days old, and B2 is 5 days old (Day7/5).

April 14

April 23 Day 1

April 24 Day 2/0

April 29 Day 7/5

April 30 Day 8/6

May 4 Day 12/10

May 6 Day 14/12

May 9 Day 17/15

Black-chinned Hummingbirds’ Nesting Facts

Nests are constructed of plant down and spider and insect silk. They are well camouflaged with lichens gathered and applied one at a time. About the size of a large strawberry, a nest looks like a small growth on the branch.

H1: 2 young fledged May 14

H2: 2 young fledged May 23

H3: 2 eggs incubating since May 17/19

Here’s a secret: I’ve never found a hummingbird nest when I went looking for one. So what’s the trick? It’s about looking past my feeder and watching what my hummers are doing in the yard. Was that female hummingbird pulling thistle seeds and fluff out of a dried up thistle head? Why is that little hummer probing the ball moss? Is that female collecting dandelion seeds? When I hear her telegraphic chatter overhead, what is she up to? As she streams across the yard with a mouthful of fluff and a downy feather, where is she going? These are the signals of nesting hummingbirds.

After a rough 2020, an unprecedented February freeze, and an explosion of caterpillar pressure on tender freshly recovering vegetation, maybe these exciting finds are a small omen of better times to come. Resurrection or renewal? Not sure. But after watching two mother hummingbirds successfully fledge two young each and a third one still on the nest with two eggs, 2021 is starting to feel like a humdinger of a year!

Navigating Dangers and a Successful Rescue – A Postscript

It’s hard to know how many birds are impacted by forces that interrupt an otherwise successful nesting cycle. On April 27 tree trimmers showed up to cut around power lines on my front easement, just 10 feet from H2’s nest. After a phone call to the owner of the company, they respectfully accommodated my request to skip my property for the time being. But why now? What if I hadn’t been home for their unscheduled arrival?

On April 28 at 10:20 PM, a severe thunderstorm blew through, dropping 2-3-inch hailstones—seriously, I measured them. That’s over twice the size of H1’s nest. All night long I resisted the urge to go out and check on the two nests I’d been watching for the last two weeks. Instead I imagined nests on the ground, mothers lost in the storm, baby hummers clinging to life, and worse. Finally at 5:00 AM, I grabbed my flashlight. To my surprise and relief, the nests were intact, and both mothers were on their nests. I could hardly believe it. A few days later, a second hailstorm, and once again danger averted.

Then on the very day H1 fledged her babies, a team of surveyors worked along the property line just a few feet from H1’s tree. I moved my home office into the garage so I could “supervise” their work. At the end of the day, the surveyors kindly asked if I’d gotten good photographs. Yes, I had.

And if that’s not enough, there are the neighborhood cats that stalk my nest boxes and the rat snake I’ve seen twice this week.

So many dangers to be avoided, just to give these tiny birds a chance to fly.

In The Hummingbirds’ Gift, Sy Montgomery tells an enthralling story of one hummingbird rehabber’s dedication to two newborn hummingbirds. The amount of research, information, facts, and physiology packed into this small book is impressive and inspiring. But it left me continuing to ponder the question, how does one determine when to act on behalf of a wild creature, and when is it best to wait? That’s not always easy to determine, but it’s what HCMN Doray Lendacky faced on the morning of May 29. Here’s how she tells her story:

Be the Hummer – Channeling My Inner Hummingbird

Doray Lendacky

The May 28 storm brought much needed rain for our area, but it brought havoc for the third hummingbird nest in my backyard. I was heartbroken to see that the branch holding the nest had completely broken away from the tree and was lying on the ground. After some intense searching, I located two baby hummingbirds snuggled tightly in the miniature cup of a nest. My first reaction was relief, which quickly turned to OMG…what do I do to aid in their rescue?!

I channeled my inner hummingbird and created a makeshift tree by layering small lichen covered branches on top of a tomato cage in which to house the nest. But I realized this structure was too low and subject to predators. At 7:00 AM I called our local Wildlife Rehabber, Beth Young, expecting to get her voicemail, but I was greeted with a sleepy “Hello.” She offered some better suggestions, and we made a plan that if Mom didn’t find the nest within three hours, I would call back to talk about Plan B.

I found a wire hanging basket, crisscrossed some lichen branches between the wires, and carefully placed the detached nest with the babies inside. This structure was then hung as close to the original location as possible. And now I sat inside my office, stared out the window, and waited. After about 15 minutes, I saw two beaks poke up from the nest, and within 30 minutes, Mom found her babies. Yay! I continued to watch for the next 1½ hours. Mom returned every 20-30 minutes to feed her babies, and my heart was happy.

This little family got a second chance and lives for another day.

Mother hummer feeding B2 inside the wire basket, now housing the original nest.

B1 perched and preening in the wire basket.

Breaking News: After perching and roosting on a branch inside the wire basket all day Saturday and Sunday, B1 finally fledged late Sunday. I've been watching all the feeders hoping to get a glimpse of Mom showing B1 the ropes, but I haven't observed this tutelage yet. B2 is still safely tucked in the nest, and Mom comes by very often for the feeding. I expect B2 to fledge within the next two days. - Doray Lendacky, June 1

CONFOUNDED SPRING REBOUNDED

Mimi Cavender with Constance Quigley

After April’s Wormageddon, when over-abundant moth larvae stripped greening trees right back into winter gloom, May brought a delayed but glorious recovery. Your oaks should all be re-leafed by now.

Just consider: this Global warming thing is an exhaustively documented reality. Its effects have been observed and abundantly stored now in living human memory. So we shouldn’t be surprised by the long-predicted trend toward hotter summers, colder winters, more extreme “weather events” and the ecological upsets that follow. But each hurricane, flood, tornado, each 103-degree week or frozen citrus crop seems always to strike us as a terrible surprise. The Weather Channel milks it for millions of advertising dollars and sends another hunky reporter in a blue jacket to lean into the wind. We track global trends, regional trends, and changes in species’ habitat, food and water, and migration patterns. We bitterly regret the decline of species and lament insufficient public education, lack of political will. Surprises, as much as they should shock us into action, no longer seem to. We are a lazy bunch—Master Naturalists excluded, of course. Check out the HELM initiative in our March issue.

There’s interconnection in all of Nature, so it wasn’t so much surprise as natural pattern in April’s caterpillar infestation. After February’s Big Freeze suppressed certain predator wasps, moth larvae surged into the unusually severe defoliating Worm Attack! documented in the Hays Humm May issue.

Interconnection allows for predicted change. But we still get some real surprises. Case study: In April, when we were all combing caterpillars out of our hair, HCMN and Hays Humm co-editor Constance Quigley reported “the complete meltdown” of one of her large healthy green Texas Prickly Ash trees (probably Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, “based on the spiny trunk”). It was stripped by a stunning American Ermine Moth larva (Yponomeuta multipunctella) at the southwestern extreme of its U.S. range—a rare find in Central Texas.

Texas Prickly Ash: first spring growth…

…devastated in April’s caterpillar attack…

…by this American Ermine Moth larva, rare in Hays.

Constance was the lucky one. In fact, these spotted beauties hang out at her place:

“They attack my Prickly Ash every year. Sometimes it manages to bloom before they defoliate it (2020 was a fabulous year), but other years it’s completely stripped of foliage even as the buds are forming. This year was very sad, as I was anticipating some nectar for my bees and the natives that flock to this tree every year… so I’ve been checking it daily to make sure it’s ok and that we’ll have another cycle of life.”

And she watched her Texas Prickly Ash trees recover all shiny bright, only to be chewed on in May—surprise!—by a new menace:

“This beetle has now infested all of my recovered trees, and you can see some of the damage on the leaf edges. I believe its larvae also cause a lot of damage, but the eggs [laid now] may not hatch until next spring. iNaturalist IDs it as a Groundselbush Beetle (Trirhabda bacharidis). The larvae are absolutely gorgeous, but I don’t recall ever seeing them on the trees before, and the Texas Prickly Ash isn’t listed as a host plant for them. It is a host plant for the Giant Swallowtail, which is why I love it so much.”

Prickly recovered from Wormageddon…

…only to be re-attacked…

…by this Groundselbush Beetle…

…whose hungry larvae may hatch next spring!

Larva photo ©Charley Eiseman at www.charleyeiseman.com. All other Prickly-Ash-related photos are by Constance Quigley. Remaining photos are by Mimi Cavender.

Constance: “I have added a note to my calendar next April to spray the heck out of this tree with Bt before the larvae manage to take hold.” Bt—Bacilllus thuringiensis—is an environment-safe, non-toxic, nonpathogenic microbe found naturally in soil. Widely available since the 19th century in commercial preparations, it’s a specific against cutworm caterpillars and other larval pests. It’s sound organic gardening. Or we can just let Nature surprise us.

If we had anticipated this spring’s Wormageddon, we might have sprayed our more valuable plants. But how could we have protected entire mottes of 30-foot oaks? Yards, parks, and pastures full? With so many trees in Texas set back to zero, we could only watch and wait. And wait…

Finally, a pleasant surprise. Like Constance’s Prickly Ash, our oaks have valiantly re-budded, greening again from scratch in their second spring this year. Can you imagine the energy that takes? Predictable or surprising, Nature—and Nature includes us!—finds a way.

By the way, did you ID last month’s pretty green Mystery Cat?

It’s one of five Owlet Moths in North America: a Figure Eight Sallow cutworm (Psaphida resumens), family Noctuidae. Central Texas is the southwestern extreme of its range in the United States.

Photo: Mimi Cavender

Thanks to Charley Eiseman for the Groundselbush Beetle larva photo; and to Chicago-area naturalists Jane and John Balaban for their quick ID of the Psaphida larva on BugGuide and Moth Photographers Group, and to one of the fine moth photographers, Marcia Morris, for her shot of the adult moth on that same excellent citizen scientist forum. Thanks to Constance Quigley for introducing us to BugGuide. It’s a useful information exchange for entomologists and curious amateurs. Like us.

BUTTERFLY SURVEY IN SCHULLE CANYON

Jo Korthals

It would have been a perfect mid-April day, without the hanging worms. But I had butterflies to monitor in a natural area near my home. Double knotting the laces on my hiking boots, I thought about what items I needed to put into my string bag. Water, of course, bug repellant, my butterfly ID chart…what else? This would be the first time I would complete a butterfly survey in Schulle Canyon, one of six City of San Marcos Natural Areas, together offering more than 1,200 acres and 22 miles of trails.

Schulle Canyon’s ½-mile crushed granite trail winds through 21 acres of natural parkland densely wooded with mature live oaks, bois d’arc, and towering cedar elms. A diverse understory includes Texas persimmon, red buckeye, evergreen sumac, mountain laurel, and prickly ash. For more information and trail maps, go to San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance.

The tabby cat and spaniel circled my legs—We want to go too!—as I squeezed out the door. I saw the glistening strands of hanging caterpillars. There were so many it was surreal, a curtain of wiggling worms. The annual cycle of oak roller caterpillars was annoying, but they feed baby birds in the area. I walked toward the trailhead at nearby Schulle, flicking soft caterpillar bodies off my shirt.

Editors: The butterfly count survey is in association with the Texas Butterfly Monitoring Network, part of the North American Butterfly Monitoring Network. The survey is an approved volunteer project for Texas Master Naturalists, one of the many current virtual citizen science projects for Hays MNs to take advantage of. For HCMNs reporting their volunteer hours, select the last line of the list of opportunities: TMN Virtual Volunteer Fair. Citizen science is convenient, enjoyable, and a win-win for us contributors and the scientists grateful for our data.

For over a year now, the pandemic has forced state-affiliated organizations such as TMN to cancel indoor meetings and to socially distance outdoor volunteers for safety. I had found during the past year that I didn’t mind working alone.

At Schulle, I noted in my head the date, checked my cell for the time and temperature, and looked at the clouds slowly moving above me on an intermittent breeze; all ambient information was to be added later to the official data sheet and then entered into Pollardbase.

My route was a loop with four zones: open grassland, upper woodland, lower woodland, and riparian. I turned my head, scanning the first zone, an open grass area, for butterflies. The sweet smell of blooming chinaberry trees filled my nose. As a naturalist I know this tree is nonnative and invasive. I feel a small sadness that the scent won’t be here next year, as most of the chinaberry trees are being removed from this natural area. I heard the crepitation and then saw the flight of a grasshopper. Grasshoppers snap their hind wings as they fly, making a cracking sound. But I had to focus—no grasshoppers, moths, or dragonflies count on the survey, just butterflies.

As I walked up the rocky path in the second zone, I saw my first butterfly, a Red Admiral, bright red and black. The butterfly is beautiful and in sharp contrast to the spring green of the long grass along the trail. As I descended into the third zone, I counted two Painted Ladies, gold, tan and cream wings waving. They are common to this area because of the many hackberry trees, their larva’s host plant. I have often seen their cute green caterpillars waving their antennae on a large hackberry tree in our yard.

The fourth zone of my count I identified as riparian, a land area along water. This wet weather creek was a stretch of the definition. The creek is most often dry, but after a rain it contains small pools of water that my cat loves to dabble her front paws in on our walks. I saw a bright yellow butterfly flitting ahead of me. I tried to get a photo with my cell, but the Sulfur was too quick. I couldn’t get close enough to narrow down the species; there are several butterflies of this type. As I hiked out of the natural area, I noted the finish time and pulled more caterpillars off my hat and neck. Once a week for the next few months, I will take this walk, survey the butterflies, and enjoy nature.

This TMN citizen science project has been fun. I learned how to use a GPS unit, download the file and then convert it to a KML (Keyhole Marker Language) file. Learn how here.

Once the KML file was submitted, my route in Schulle Canyon Natural Area became part of a set of sites all across the state. Each week, I enter the required data first in an electronic data record, then into Pollardbase. I don’t know yet how it will be used.

In Schulle, I have seen the usual butterflies I see in our yard: Red Admiral, Painted Lady, Tiger Swallowtail , Cloudless Sulfur, Monarch; and two species new to me: Juniper Hairstreak and Question Mark.

Cloudless Sulfur

Juniper Hairstreak

Monarch

Red Admiral

I really enjoy being a part of Hays County Master Naturalist; it is interesting work and great people. I am also participating in Plant ID Bingo, which is using a plant list from the Native Plant Society and creating Bingo cards and a data sheet. My ongoing project is at the Meadows Center in San Marcos, maintaining demonstration beds and removing invasive plants. I also participate with Team Flora, a subgroup of the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance. We gather native plant seeds and sow them in natural areas, especially where invasive plants have been removed.

Here’s my tabby cat, Kootie, appropriately leashed, enjoying a puddle in Schulle Creek. I have leash trained two cats and would share the process for anyone who is interested.

Working the Brush piles at Patsy Glenn Refuge by Tom Jones

"The refuge is maintained by a dedicated group of volunteers from the Wimberley Birding Society as well as members of the Hays County Master Naturalists. There’s one team that keeps the bird blind cleaned up and the feeders filled, another that maintains the butterfly garden near the entrance of the preserve, and an assortment of hard-working individuals who keep the pathways and natural areas functioning for wildlife and visitors alike.”
“It has been my pleasure for the past several years to help coordinate the work to support Patsy Glenn’s vision for the refuge—preserving nature in the heart of Wimberley.” Bob Currie, 2011 Class Painted Bunting

I recently joined Bob Currie and other volunteers on a rainy weekend to work at the Patsy Glenn Refuge. The work involved trimming dead or downed trees and rearranging the existing brush piles to create filter-strip dams made from selectively cleared cedar. The term brush pile describes a mound or heap of woody vegetative material constructed to furnish additional wildlife cover. Loosely formed brush piles provide nesting habitat, resting areas, concealment, and protection from predators. Our task involved breaking down the existing piles and relocating them to improve drainage and create habitat for wildlife.

The restoration efforts at the Patsy Glenn Refuge demonstrate responsible stewardship of our natural resources. Whether you are a new property owner or have lived here for some time, and regardless of the size of your property, you see sustainable clearing and habitat restoration practices here that you can easily adapt for your own use, including:

Filter-strip dams made from selectively cleared cedar to slow soil erosion and control water run-off into Cypress Creek, which in turn helps protect our fragile watershed.
Brush piles of cedar and rock to provide shelter for birds, animals, insects, and reptiles.
Rainwater collection, which provides much-needed water to native flora and fauna throughout the park.

The Patsy Glenn Refuge Team
Susan Evans, Pres. Wimberley Birding Society & HCMN
Jerry Lunow, WBS member, licensed architect, landscape architect, and Master Naturalist from Houston
Lin Weber, WBS and HCMN
Art Crowe, WBS and HCMN
Jim Miller, HCMN
Neal Sutton, HCMN class of ’21
Mike & Sherry Meves, HCMN class of ’21
Bob Currie, WBS and HCMN

Arranging brush into filter strip dams

Lin Weber & Susan Evans at the Bird Blind

Filter strip dams constructed from existing brush piles

Retention pond discharge into Patsy Glenn Refuge

I discovered these two books after contacting Blake Hendon, a wildlife biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). He recommended them to me when I told him I wanted to help a friend of mine improve gamebird habitat on his 70-acre property on the Blanco River. My friend is the proud owner of a beautiful dog, Rowdy, a field trial national champion Brittany. It was with the idea of improving quail habitat on my friend’s property and giving Rowdy something to do in his retirement that I contacted Blake.

After I’d read the first book on Texas Bobwhite and watching some informative videos on YouTube from the Rollins Plains Research Ranch, it became apparent that we would have better luck with turkey. You should know that quail populations in Texas are on the way down, while turkey populations are expanding in most parts of the state. This should not discourage anyone from attempting to improve quail habitat on their property, however. Many of the management practices recommended for quail would benefit other gamebirds, such as dove and turkey.

Texas Bobwhites

The first thing most people will tell you is the reason for the decline of bobwhite quail is simple: fire ants. And that is simply not true. It is better to think along the lines of changing land use patterns and habitat fragmentation as the primary reasons for quail declines. There are steps that you can take to boost populations that may exist in an area. Purposeful management techniques can be used to improve nesting, brooding, foraging, loafing, and roosting habitats. All are necessary for a healthy quail population. If you taste good, the world can be a dangerous place! Quail know this and try to avoid their many predators by keeping out of sight. Quail prefer to feed only twice a day, in the early morning and then again in the evening. During the mid-part of the day, they need loafing cover roughly the size of a VW Bug, a space that is dense from above and relatively open from below, to protect themselves from hawks. Their foraging habitats are specialized as well. Vegetated cover needs to be open (roughly 30% bare dirt is ideal) with all the food sources within about six inches of the ground. Quail walk everywhere they go. They only fly if flushed by a predator.

The amount of available suitable habitat matters. To maintain stable populations over time, you need at least 800 individuals. At a density of one bird per two acres, this would require 1,600 acres. You would probably have to double that here in the Hill Country, given the amount of Ashe juniper. So unfortunately for my friend, it is not possible to sustain a viable quail population on his isolated 70-acre tract. But you might. What are the land use patterns in your neck of the woods?

The book touches on topics such as nutritional requirements, limiting nutrients, predator control, brush management, fire management, grazing, disking, and the control of exotic grasses. But most of the book centers on crop (throat pouch) surveys: What are quail eating during the winter months in Texas? About 60-80% of a quail’s diet during winter is composed of seeds, primarily from grasses and forbs. The book highlights seeds from grasses, forbs, and woody vegetation found in the crops of quail, along with their relative abundance, a map of the state where the plants are known to occur, a picture of the plant and the seed, and in many cases the seed’s protein content.

Seeds commonly found in Texas Hill Country quail include rescue grass, Johnson grass, browntop, and Texas signal grass. Common forb seeds include Texas bull nettle, dove weed, snow-on-the-prairie, partridge pea, bluebonnet, and wood sorrel. Berries from woody shrubs include agarita, honey mesquite, beautyberry, and hackberry.

Texas Bobwhite by Eva Frost

Turkey by Mike Davis

Wild Turkeys in Texas

This book has especially useful chapters on habitat requirements and management and on behavioral ecology. But I found the chapter on habitat restoration to be the most interesting. Unregulated market hunting after the arrival of the first European settlers led to the near elimination of wild turkey throughout their geographic range in Texas. The reintroduction of wild turkeys across most of their range in Texas over the last 100 years is truly one of the state’s most remarkable wildlife management success stories.

Through the years there were more failures than successes. Many decades of wasted effort and money were spent trying to release turkeys raised on game farms into a wild setting, where they were incapable of surviving. The practice continued into the late 1970s. In 1988 Texas partnered with the other states to create the National Wild Turkey Federation. What followed was the most ambitious era in Eastern wild turkey restoration in Texas. Success was still hard to come by in many locations. But in 2007 the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department funded research at Stephen F. Austin University to further increase transplant success. What followed was the development of a Habitat Suitability Index that started to yield consistent, successful releases.

There are three species of turkey in Texas: Eastern, Rio Grande, and Merriam. Areas preferred by the Rio Grande subspecies have a high grass species richness and in turn a high density of insects. Woody cover over 70% in the Hill Country has a negative impact on the amount and diversity of insects, grasses, and forbs. One of the essential components for nesting habitat for the Rio Grande turkey is proximity to water. Nests are usually found within 0.25 miles of permanent water. Roosting sites are equally important. Turkeys will roost in the tallest trees available. Rio Grande turkey abundance in Texas has been linked to watercourses, as riparian areas often provide the tall cypress, pecan, and oaks that the birds prefer. During the year, turkeys can range over several thousand acres in order to meet all their feeding and mating needs.

Because it has a broader geographic range in the state, the Rio Grande turkey’s diet is much broader than that of the Eastern subspecies. Rio Grande turkeys prefer large grass seeds or clustered seed heads that can be easily stripped from the plant, which in the Hill Country include paspalums, bristle grasses, windmill grasses, rescue grass, little barley, and others. Forbs, such as dove weed, partridge pea, silverleaf, nightshade, and yellow wood sorrel are common foods. Berries from a variety of woody vegetation are consumed as well: agarita, grape, hackberry, mesquite, persimmon and sumac. Snails are an important part of the female’s diet during egg laying.

What’s a landowner to do?

Well, unless you own a sizable hunk of Texas, you’re going to have to enlist the help of neighbors. Seventy acres, even if they are right on the Blanco, aren’t enough. (Sorry, Rowdy, you may have to live out your retirement on the couch.) If you are lucky, maybe your neighbor is unwittingly providing the necessary habitat for you. Or maybe you could enlist your neighbor’s help over a cup coffee and pitch the idea of a gamebird co-op. TPWD can help in these cases. Don’t be afraid to contact your area wildlife biologist (blake.hendon@tpwd.texas.gov). It’s their job to help.

One of the first things they will tell you is to know the vegetation on your property. I know this because that was what Blake told us we needed to do. It’s not as hard as it sounds. I was able to do a survey of my back pasture (1 acre) in just over two hours (view Survey). I could not have done the survey without the help of iNaturalist Seek. This app is free, and it is one of my favorites! In this survey, relative abundance is more important than mere presence. If nothing else, you need to know what the dominant and common plants are on your property. Finally, if you think you are lacking in a particular grass or forb for game birds, order the seed from Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s directory of national seed suppliers, or from Native American Seed, Ernst Seeds, or some other online source.

FIREFLY GRANT AWARD FOR OUTREACH EVENTS

Beth Ramey

Early this year we opened our first Firefly Grant Application period for Project Coordinators. We had several applicants, two were approved immediately and three others are pending.

One of the projects that received funding was Outreach Events. Outreach Project Coordinator Paula Glover and her dedicated team of volunteers promote our Chapter and the Texas Master Naturalist Program to the general public at a variety of local events. Paula was excited about the opportunity to apply for a grant: “Applying was very easy with the online form, but some thoughtful consideration is needed beforehand. Researching what you need specifically and getting accurate pricing will help expedite the process. If you have partners, a letter of support from them is essential to know that everyone is on board.” Her plan for a grant included a new event canopy with the Chapter logo printed on it and updated display holders for materials, shown in the photos below.

The Firefly awards, part of a Willett Grant made to our chapter, are intended to increase our presence and impact in the county. By providing funding, the doors open to many new possibilities for projects that have aspirations but lack the money to achieve them.

“Willett funds were a perfect avenue to get those things that make us look more professional,“ said Paula. “We have set up our new canopy at several events now, and it really draws folks in. Our table looks uniform with new display cases. We are also working on a children’s activity book that highlights the best of Hays County. The Willett grant has provided the funding to improve our Outreach public image.”

The Willett Committee will be accepting applications for grants from interested Project Coordinators again in June. The application period is repeated every six months.

Melanie Webb at the Dripping Springs Farmer Market in May

Mel Seib and Lauralee Harris at Kyle Front Porch Days

The Hays Humm - June 2021